Play It Again Sam
by Meriem Clayton
Summary: Sam is having second thoughts about marrying Pete and discovering deep feelings for both Jack and Daniel. She uses an Ancient device to try to understand herself and, maybe, find an acceptable way to have them both.
1. Default Chapter

Notes 

This update changed no story content but was simply to break the stories into chapers to make it easier to read.

This story was written strictly for the purpose of entertainment. No attempt has been made to copyright any characters which may not have been originally created by the author, and no profit is made from this work of fiction. Any original characters and the stories themselves are the property of the author.

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Sam was sitting at her desk with a carton of yogurt, now empty, and a copy of "A Dummy's Guide to Planning Your Wedding" in front of her. The book was opened to a neatly highlighted page about bridesmaid's dresses. In a stack next to it were four bride-genre magazines with Post-it tabs sticking out. Originally the idea had been to put the tabs where she found bridesmaid's dresses she liked. One entire pass through hadn't resulted in a single tab. The tabs now in place represented a second pass, flagging those dresses that she didn't think would lead to the bridesmaids quitting en masse. "Good night, this is painful," she lamented to herself.

Leaning back in the chair and staring glumly at the fruits of her lunch hour, she wondered, "What's wrong with me? Women are supposed to really get into this stuff. The medieval custom of marriage by proxy where you don't even have to be present at the ceremony is sounding really appealing. I wonder what it would take to revive that?"

She closed her eyes tiredly and a long forgotten memory surfaced of her nursery and primary school friend, Jennifer, wanting to play bride. "I don't know what happened to her but the way she was into weddings she's probably been married 5 times by now," Sam mused.

A patch of dandelions or a vacant lot with clover immediately suggested a bouquet and anything handy became the veil. It could be something reasonable like a sweater or as minimal as a large leaf. Jennifer's imagination could fill in the rest. Sam, who was not really interested and just going along to make her friend happy, was usually cast as the groom but sometimes she was tapped to conduct the service with a large doll, a passing dog, or a stick standing next to Jennifer as her soon-to-be spouse.

Sam visualized the younger version of herself and Jennifer suddenly transported to her office. That would have been a shocker for little Samantha. At five she was planning on growing up to be a cowgirl. But to follow through on the idea, what would Jennifer have improvised with here? There wasn't anything remotely floral but she did have a pen with a huge big bird eraser on the end, a gift from Teal'c, for reasons that were completely murky. "Okay so that's sort of like a bouquet, like a stem with something on the end."

A veil. Humm. Her eyes fell on a curious Ancient device that had been on the corner of her desk for so long that she didn't even notice it any more. They had run every test they could think of and had never gotten it to do anything. She pulled it to her now and opened up the case. As she remembered, the device came in two parts that they only believed were associated because they had been found together in this apparently custom designed container. One piece was some sort of a handheld control with several buttons and a small flat panel that looked like a possible display area. The other item was a largish, round piece of mesh. It looked metallic but when you picked it up, it draped fluidly over whatever you set it on. She said out loud, wryly noting how far toward the loony bin the wedding preparations were driving her, "Now that looks like Jennifer's idea of a veil."

In the grip of some strange whim, but with enough presence of mind to check first to make sure her door was shut, she pulled out both parts and put them on the desk in front of her. Then she picked up the mesh and positioned it on her head. She noticed immediately that it not only draped over her skull but it seemed to cling. When she looked down to find Big Bird, she was shocked to see that the large center button was now glowing on the control.

This button was common to other Ancient devices they had encountered and she knew it was the Ancient on/off button. So it didn't activate unless the mesh was on someone's head. They hadn't thought of trying that. Her years of scientific training and experience were telling her firmly that she needed to take the mesh off, assemble a team, and test this out methodically. However, little Samantha still was in the room and, without consciously deciding anything, she reached out and pushed the on/off button.

Immediately, a second button to the right and above the first began to glow. "It really is time to stop," her adult self said, this time out loud.

"Naaaah," little Samantha said in her head and Sam pushed the second button. Nothing happened. No more buttons lit up. In fact the two buttons that had been lit, were now dead.

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"Well that was disappointing," she thought. "But still, it does suggest a really interesting research direction we can pursue." She removed the mesh which, she noticed, wasn't really clinging any more, put everything back in the case, the case back on the corner of her desk, and chucked the yogurt carton in the trash. Lunch time was over. Score 0 for wedding preparations but 1 at least for the cause of scientific advancement. "I really should try googling Jennifer and see if I can back in touch," she resolved

Sam decided to stop off at the infirmary. Her meeting with Jack was not for another 10 minutes or so and maybe she could cheer up her friend, Dr. Kate Hogan, a bit. She and Kate had bonded instantly when Kate had joined Cheyenne Mountain's medical team six months before to fill part of the gap Janet Frazer had left when she died. Not that ANYONE could completely fill that hole.

"Kate's been so low lately. She hasn't said so in so many words but I bet her biological clock has gone off. She REALLY wants to meet someone she could get serious about. Working the hours she does though, it would just about have to be someone from Cheyenne Mountain," Sam thought and began reviewing likely candidates. It wasn't going much better than the search for bridesmaids' dresses. Then she had a thought, "What about Daniel?" For some reason it wasn't a particularly palatable thought but it did have a certain logic. Both were brilliant in their fields but not completely of this world in some ways.

As she stepped out of her office, Sam noticed a definite pine scent out in the hall. Now that she thought about it, she had noticed the same smell in her office a moment ago. A new cleaning compound?

Sam entered the infirmary but Kate wasn't in sight. She asked a nurse," Is Dr. Hogan around?"

The nurse looked briefly puzzled. "You know I thought she was here. She must have just left. Why don't you check her office, Colonel?"

Sam started to leave and then turned back for a moment, "When did they start using that pine scented cleaning stuff?"

The nurse, immersed in something involving syringes, looked up at her a little surprised to be having any further conversation, "I'm afraid I don't know what you mean, Colonel Carter."

"You don't smell it?"

The nurse was military after all and so she answered respectfully, "I'm sorry Ma'am but I don't smell anything. I've got a cold though."

"Well, okay, thanks."

As Sam neared Kate's office, she heard muffled conversation, Kate and someone else, someone male. Maybe Daniel? It was almost as if she had conjured him up with her mental dating service for Kate a few minutes earlier. Then there was silence. The door was very slightly ajar and curious to know who was in there with Kate before she entered, she peered through the crack.

"I don't believe it," Sam thought shocked. Kate and Daniel were in definite lip lock.

She squeezed her eyes shut. "I … really …don't.. want… to… see… this."

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Why did she feel a chair underneath her all of a sudden? When she opened her eyes, she was sitting at her desk with the mesh piece on her head. It was still clinging to her head and there were now four buttons glowing on the control. Also, there was a symbol in the little flat area toward the bottom. The pine smell was gone.

"If you are not going to bring anyone else into this yet, at least ACT like scientist," she admonished herself sternly. Leaving the mesh on her head, she opened Excel and started a spreadsheet. She had a column for the number of the test, a column for each button to note the sequence in which it was pressed, if pressed, a column for what appeared in the display area, and a column for observed consequences.

"Okay, trial number 1," she said addressing her nonexistent colleagues. "We did the center button first" She wrote a 1 in that column "and then it was the button in the upper right hand corner." She wrote a 2 in that column. "I thought about Kate getting together with Daniel and then I found them kissing. If I share this with someone else…humm" On second thought she decided to describe it as "thought about Kate talking to Daniel and found them talking," not completely untrue. Then it occurred to her that the pine smell had been unusual and she noted that.

Thinking about it, it seemed to Sam that you could get very confused by where you were and when. Before she went on to the next trial she wrote the date and time on her white board in large letters, April 3, 1:15.

"Okay, trial number 2 we'll try to repeat trial number 1 results to confirm." Sam pressed the on/off button and all the other buttons stopped glowing. "So I turned it off I guess." She pushed on/off again and saw all of the other buttons that had been glowing before glowing again. She again pushed the button in the upper right hand corner.

Once again the control device had gone dark and the mesh lost its clinginess. Sam noticed a lemony odor. Perhaps every new scenario got its own characteristic odor. Time now to dream up the situation that she would explore. She found she really didn't want to think about Kate and Daniel together. That wasn't really what she had to do to repeat the test anyway. She simply had to think about a specific event and see if it happened. "Okay, here we go. What if Jack decided to retire?"

She removed the mesh, threw away her yogurt carton again, wrote scenario 2 on the white board below the time, and closed up the office. She dropped by the infirmary and found Kate going over some medical records with the nurse. "Hey Kate. How's it going?"

Kate shrugged and said unenthusiastically, "Same old, same old."

"Yeah, I know. Me too. I'm on my way to Jack's office for a meeting. I just thought I'd stop and say Hi."

Kate suddenly looked energized and she walked over to Sam in the doorway. "Step into the hall with me a minute," she said in a low voice.

In the hall, Kate looked both ways and then said, still very quietly, "I just heard an incredible rumor."

"Really? What?"

"Well, the word is that General O'Neill has decided to retire."

"WHAT!" Sam said, forgetting to modulate her volume. She had thought it but really hadn't totally expected it to work.

"Keep it down," Kate admonished. "So you hadn't heard that?"

"No," Sam said firmly. As fond as she was of Kate, the woman had to be the biggest gossip she had ever met. "Look, I'll let you know if find anything out, okay?"

Kate agreed and went back into the infirmary. Sam sagged against the wall. "I don't know if I like playing God or not. I think I'm ready for this to stop," she told herself.

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Suddenly back in her chair, Sam saw that the same four buttons were lit but so was the button next to the display area. The symbol in the little display area was different. The white board just had the time and not the words she had written after she had entered the lemon scented scenario. Sam looked at her watch. Less than a minute had elapsed. The only time that had passed had been the time to actually launch the trial after she wrote on the whiteboard.

Finally Sam's superego had its way. She recorded what had happened on Trial 2 and then took the mesh off. All the buttons were now dark.

Before she went any further, she should get all the information she could. She called up the file with all the lab notes for the device. She found Daniel's translation of the symbols cut into the buttons. The on/off was as she expected. The button in the upper right she had used to start trial 2 was "Birth", the button below it that only started to glow after she had finished trial 1 was "Growth". Daniel had had no translation for the button next to the display area where the symbols had appeared. The button to the left was "Kill." There were two small buttons under the Growth button that had never glowed. When it came to translating them, Daniel had apparently had little confidence in his translations. One was ?Now? and one was ?Future?

She decided to find out what the two symbols were that had appeared in the display area. And then there was her meeting with Jack, for which she was now late. She jotted the symbols down on a pad and tore off the top sheet, jammed it in her pocket, and hustled out the door, locking it behind her.

After they had gone over the report that was the point of the meeting, Sam asked, as casually as possible, "Do you ever think about retiring?"

"Is that a hint, Carter?" Jack asked looking a little miffed.

"No, no, not at all. I heard a rumor."

"You heard a rumor? Sam, if you listen hard enough you can hear a rumor about almost anything. There are even rumors about me and D," he stopped abruptly, cutting himself off in mid-word.

"I'm sorry, sir. I didn't mean any disrespect. I guess I had better be going," she said inching toward the door.

"Good bye Colonel. Don't buy any shares in the Brooklyn Bridge, huh," he called after her.

It did rather look like if there were rumors in the lemon reality she had thought them into being.

She found Daniel in his office, peering at a black board. "Hey, Daniel, can I have a moment?"

"Huh, what?" he asked his mind clearly somewhere else as he continued to stare at the blackboard.

"Good. Maybe he won't even really remember what I asked him," she thought, unsure why she was so unwilling to share anything about the device yet but sure she wasn't going to. "Daniel, do you know what either of these Ancient symbols represents?" She passed him her crumbled sheet of paper.

"One and two," he said promptly and gave her back her paper.

"Just like that? You don't need to look them up to be sure?"

"Sam, the numerals are all over everything. They're one of the few things I do know without thinking." He turned to look at her. "What is this all about anyway?"

"Uh oh. He's getting engaged. Not good. He can be like a pit bull once you get him curious," she told herself.

"Nothing really. I'll just be going."

He squinted at her for a moment, but the pull of the chalkboard was too strong and he didn't watch her leave.

"So after the Kate/Daniel scenario I saw the 1 and after the retirement scenario I saw the 2," she reviewed in her head as she promptly returned to her office, let herself in, and relocked the door. She pulled up the spreadsheet, renamed the columns to their translations, and mapped up the sequences for 10 more trials.

She erased the previous time from the whiteboard and wrote April 3 3:10. She put the mesh back on her head and turned the device on. The Ancient symbol for 1 was showing in the display area. "Let's try Growth." Nothing happened. But the two small buttons under it ?Now? and ?Future? began glowing. It seemed to make sense to pick one of them. She decided on ?Now?

The minute she hit the button, she was back in the hall outside Kate's office, smelling pine. She knocked on the door and pushed in without waiting for a response. To her surprise, although Daniel and Kate started to spring apart, they aborted the move when they saw it was her. Kate had a huge smile on her face as did Daniel. "Oh Sam," Kate said sounding happier than she had for months. "I'm glad it's you. The most wonderful thing has happened." She smiled up at Daniel.

Daniel pulled her back into a tight embrace and said over her shoulder. "Kate and I just realized that we have wasted way too much time not knowing how each of us felt about the other. You might as well be the first to know," he paused, pulled back, and looked down at Kate. "We're officially a couple."

Sam tried to put on a happy face but she was thinking furiously, "I'm changing this. They are going to break up immediately." The couple didn't seem to have gotten the message. They were still grinning at each other like complete idiots.

"Hey, Sam, " Daniel asked. "We'll see you later. Please close the door on the way out."

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She triggered the end of the session and found herself in her office. The pine smell was gone and the lights were lit again on the device. She had to be back in reality. She looked at her watch. Less than a minute had transpired in real time since she started the scenario.

She dutifully recorded the trial. She had gone to the first scenario when she hit Growth and the numeral one had been in the display area. Maybe the purpose of the numeral was to determine which scenario you resumed. Growing something did sound like you worked with something already there unlike Birth which seemed appropriate for something new. So far, the device had been consistent with that notion.

Sam was not pleased with the whole Kate/Daniel thing. She realized that she felt a little nauseated and lot disgusted with herself. "What is wrong with me anyway? I'm getting married. I should be delighted my friend has someone now too, even if it's only in some sort of alternate whatever. We could have a double wedding." That was incredibly upsetting. Sam had to open the bottom drawer of her desk and pull out the secret stash of Peeps.

One Peep later, she was ready for another trial. She wrote April 3 3:33 on the whiteboard, returned to her chair, noticed that the numeral one was in the display area, and hit Growth again. This time she choose the ?Future? button next.

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Sam was standing at the front of a church in a really ugly bridesmaid's dress. Kate was coming down the aisle toward her on her father's arm. Sam had time to think, "Good grief Kate. This god-awful puce concoction is one of the dresses I had enough sensitivity not to even consider for my bridesmaids." And then she felt a huge and unexplainable wave of jealousy.

Daniel was standing at the altar waiting for Kate, flanked by Jack and Teal'c. Cassie stood next to Sam. Daniel looked nervous but Kate was radiant and didn't look as if she had a doubt in the world as she paced slowly but relentlessly towards them. Sam scanned the audience and saw her boyfriend, Pete, in the third row on the bride's side of the church. When they made eye contact, he winked at her. "Winked! Let's be honest here, Sam. That's a full blown leer," she acknowledged to herself. She didn't really appreciate it in her current frame of mind.

The ceremony droned on. They had written their own vows, in Latin. "Oh please," she thought. When the minister said, "If anyone one present knows of any reason why these two should not…" she didn't even let him finish.

"I do," she announced loudly and raised her hand. There was a stunned murmuring in the church. Suddenly, Teal'c was at her side, clamped her in a viselike grip and started dragging her out. "This is all wrong," she was shouting. "You are only together because I thought it into being." She didn't see a single sympathetic face. Pete looked like he wanted to crawl under his chair. She ended the session.

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Sam sat in the chair, feeling shaken. She firmly put her mind on the protocol and recorded the time in the spreadsheet. Less than a minute again from the time on the whiteboard.

Focusing on the scientific problem presented was certainly more fun than the image of Kate and Daniel reciting their vows to each other. She thought she had a working hypothesis about some of the buttons now. The Birth button appeared to start a new scenario. The Growth button appeared to resume an existing scenario. She needed to try that with a 2 in the display area instead of the 1 to see if it resumed the retiring Jack alternative. ?Now? seemed to pick up a scenario where last experienced and ?Future? skipped forward, extrapolating the events from the last point. It seemed like she could influence events in the first session but maybe not later. She needed to confirm that one too. She hoped it would be a less embarrassing confirmation.

Suddenly she had an inspiration about the Kill button. Making the analogy to various human devices, it seemed to make great sense that this would be a delete. Her desire to delete session 1 was so enormous that she didn't take the time to consider the button might cause something more dire. She was right. When she hit Kill, the 1 faded and the 2 showed.


	2. Chapter 2

Time to go back to the retirement scenario to confirm the way she thought Growth worked and the thought that she couldn't change anything in a subsequent session once she set it in motion in the first session. Finding herself back outside the infirmary again after pushing Growth and ?Now? she continued on to Jack's office and sat impatiently through the business discussion. When they finished, Jack said, "There's something else we need to discuss. I've decided to retire. I was never meant to fly a desk and they've decided I'm too old to be back in the field."

"Please reconsider sir," she begged him and she trotted out every argument she could think of. He remained completely unmoved. She went to Daniel who told her that he already knew and actually thought it was a good idea. No support there. Teal'c, at least, seemed to be an ally but he didn't have any more success than Sam. She tried everything she could think of including a petition drive.

Finally Kate took her aside. "Sam, this is just kind of over the top. Is it," she hesitated and then plowed ahead, "is it that you can't stand for him not to be around. Most people think you have a thing for him big time."

"Hardly," Sam said indignantly. "Look, Kate, I have a really bad headache. This lemon smell…"

"Sam, maybe you are getting a migraine. An odor can be a precursor although this seems like a long lead time. But, we can deal with that in a moment." Sam had turned away from her and Kate walked around to get in her line of sight again. "Sam, if you really love Jack, his retiring is the best thing. You won't be in his chain of command any more and you can go after him."

That was definitely enough. She ended the session. The lemon smell went away but the headache was enormous and she felt exhausted. 

There was a knock on her door. She took off the mesh, dumped it and the control in her drawer, and walked gingerly to the door to keep her head from falling off her shoulders.

It was Daniel. "Sam, I've been thinking ever since you stopped in my lab an hour ago about the Ancient symbols." He took her face in for the first time. "You don't look too good. Anything wrong? "

She made a feeble gesture. "Maybe you had better sit down," and he led her gently back to her chair. 

"What do you mean an hour ago?" she asked querulously. She could barely remember the conversation. It seemed like a week ago. Experientially it was.

"An hour ago as in around 2:00." He stuck his watch in her face and tapped the face.

"Like you ever know what time it is," she said spoiling for a fight. Failing to support her with Jack on retirement. Marrying Kate which shouldn't irritate her but did. He was not at the top of her list.

Daniel looked surprised by her hostility. "I may not be the most time conscious person in the world but it so happens that I had a 2:00 meeting with Captain Wang who showed up literally as soon as you were out the door."

Suddenly she realized what was going on. She had a week's activity without real rest. "Danny, I'm really sorry. I think I need to go home early. Maybe I'm getting a migraine."

He looked very concerned. "I swear I didn't know you had that problem."

"I didn't think I did but maybe I'm starting to."

Daniel insisted on driving her home, promising to pick her up the next day since her car was back at Cheyenne Mountain. He settled her on her couch, tucked an afghan in around her, put a DVD on, and made her a cup of tea before he left. She laid back, letting him be so good to her and feeling like a heel. She had been rude to him for things he didn't even do. Things SHE had dreamed up for him to do. She had to quit the cowboy research with the device and bring other scientists to join her in the work.

The next morning, Daniel, as good as his word, picked her up and took her to work. After a good night's sleep the headache was almost completely gone but not totally. They went through the gate to P6J9803 at 900 hours and she didn't get back to her office for 10 days. She began to wonder if the whole thing was really a dream.

Sam didn't take the device out of her drawer for another week. She was afraid of her lack of control but could not force herself to say anything about it to anyone. The morning came, however, when she was really ready to use it. She and Pete had gone bowling the night before with some of his buddies and their wives and significant others. Pete was such a sweetie. If only they could go live on a desert island somewhere. Somewhere that his fellow cops and their significant others didn't live or even visit. They were nice enough with the same mix of intelligent and interesting people as in any other cross section of the population and there were no more grating personalities than average. But it was like being in a play. She had to watch every word she said. She couldn't talk about anything that was on her mind. On the other hand, she did have to listen to people at a different place in their lives from her talk about a lot of things that bored her to distraction. She turned down invitations to home parties for Pampered Chef, Creative Memories, Stampin' Up, and Longaberger. Except for Pampered Chef, which had a sort of self-defining name, she couldn't even figure out what the other parties were for. Was this the future? Did she want it to be?

Using the Birth button, she programmed this scenario with the idea that she and Pete did go through with the wedding. She noticed that time she smelled lilies. As soon as she finished the programming thought, she stopped the session. Then she started it again, using the ?Future? button to get to some action and not have to live through days of build up that might trigger a headache. 

She found herself sitting in a Chevy Suburban in the base's parking lot. She spotted a postcard on the passenger seat next to her purse. It was an invitation to a Longaberger party. Her cell phone rang. "Hi honey," Pete said. "You've got that Longaberger thing tonight, right?" 

"Yes, I do. What are you doing?" 

"I've been working evenings Sam for what, 6 months now?"

"I know that," she said. And she was amazed to realize that she did. Just as she knew that Longaberger produced handmade baskets from their headquarters in Ohio that featured a building shaped like a basket. "I meant, what are you doing right now?"

"Sitting in a car on a stakeout."

"Did you get anything to eat?"

"Sort of. It was at least pretending to be food. Look honey, I called to ask if you could please sew the button back on that came off my suit coat when you get home tonight after the party. I have to have a suit tomorrow."

"You want me to sew your button on your suit?" She was incredulous.

"Okay, just skip it. My mother always," he stopped there. "Look I'll talk to you later."

It seemed like a daily occurrence when the idea of marriage that he had based on his parents' marriage collided head on with what she had grown up expecting marriage to be. He wasn't unreasonable and was usually willing to adjust his expectations but it made her feel like she was letting him down every time it happened. It also, perversely, made her mad at herself that she felt that way.

She realized then that she just couldn't face the Longaberger thing. She remembered Poppy Schneider, the hostess, with sudden clarity. The woman did not believe that there was anything you couldn't use a basket for. Longaberger made handsome baskets and she and Pete actually had several that she enjoyed. But even the Longaberger distributor had told her privately that she thought Poppy's use of the paper tray basket and plastic liner, priced at over $75, for kitty litter, was just a tad too much. Pete wasn't going to be home. She'd just bail on the party and go back in to the Mountain and clear out some paperwork.

Sam dropped by the cafeteria first to get something to eat since she wasn't going to get the finger food she would have had at Poppy's. The first thing she saw was Daniel, sitting alone, making designs in a mound of mashed potatoes. She went over to join him. "You trying to recreate some landmark where aliens will be landing?" she asked.

He looked at her blankly, "You know, like in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind?"

Instead of answering her question, he leaned over and almost hissed, "I thought we agreed we were going to restrict our contacts to the strictly work related."

And when she thought about, she remembered that agreement and why they had made it. "I know but what harm can there be in a cafeteria?"

"That's not the point is it? We said NO contacts at all, period."

"Daniel, you never used to be so tediously legalistic."

"That's lovely. You mess with my head, tell me I have to forget it, set up rules that are way stricter than necessary, and then tell me I'm tediously legalistic for sticking to YOUR rules."

He got up, snatched up his tray, and dropped more than set the tray down on the bus station, making a racket that swiveled more than one head in his direction, and stalked out. Sam sat, confused and unsure for a moment. The device-manufactured memories of events were not quite as clear as real memories but more like something she had read in a story rather than lived. Still, they were strong enough that after a moment, she abandoned her food and hurried after him.

Daniel managed to reach his office before she got to him. "You just can't leave it alone can you?" he asked. Suddenly he slammed the door behind her, grabbed her by her upper arms and kissed her really hard.

"Now do you remember why we made the rules? The kiss that surprised both of us? Neither one of us want to hurt Pete or disregard the vows you took." He opened the door again and said, "Please leave. You married the other guy. I don't like cheating and I don't like you for making me want to."

Sam stumbled from his office and ended the session.

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"Wow." She started to write up her notes on the trial but got stuck on the words to describe what had happened. "Wow," she thought again. "Is there really any chance at all if I marry Pete that I would be tempted to cheat on him with Daniel? How would the device know something like that?" She decided it was time for another Peep.

This scenario really had her puzzled. If she was going to cheat on Pete, why would her subconscious, for surely that was where the device was drawing information, pick Daniel as the person she cheated with? She adored Daniel. He was her best friend but if she had fantasized about anyone sexually it had been Jack, hadn't it?

Sam looked at the clock. She had only been in the office for 10 minutes. She didn't have to be anywhere for another 50 minutes. The scenarios only took enough real world time to record the outcomes in any case. She could do a hundred or more before her meeting. Of course there was her regular work waiting but surely this research was just as important. At some level she raised a hand and said, "You are rationalizing, RATIONALIZING do you hear? Stop. Stop right now!". Too bad whatever part of her mind was running the show, it wasn't listening to the voice of reason.

So the device was working on sexual fantasies, was it? Time to do something just for fun then. She put the mesh on, inserted a line in her spreadsheet, above the methodically planned next trial to put in "Imagine Brad Pitt and Antonio Banderas arrive to take me to lunch sans Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Aniston, and Melanie Griffith." When she executed the scenario, she had a real shock. She couldn't get out of her office. There wasn't even a door anymore. The phone didn't work. She ended the scenario and puzzled that one out. "I don't believe that Pitt and Banderas would ever come to take me to lunch. My subconscious had nothing to give the device. It let's you know it can't go anywhere with a scenario because of lack of information in this manner."

She tried one more to confirm that. When she got into the new scenario, she said to herself, "Okay. Suppose that all male military personnel have been directed to start wearing skirts, straight black ones with a kick pleat." Her hypothesis was confirmed. Once again she didn't have a door and couldn't leave her office.

Sam reviewed the trials to date and listed the questions remaining about the device. She hadn't figured out the button yet next to the display area. She wasn't sure whether if you did a Growth?Future? sequence on a scenario but next time did a Growth?Now? sequence you would start up from where you left off in the future scenario or start from the last chronologically continuous point from the scenario's beginning. Then there was the question, what happens in real life if I die in a scenario? The only things she would have likely to die of so far were a broken heart but she hadn't tried anything dangerous. This was something she didn't want to actually test but definitely something that needed thinking about.

She had a headache by now. Nothing serious or incapacitating. In fact she thought it might honestly be only indirectly related to the device. There was a good chance it was a direct result of the tension she was now feeling with respect to Pete. If she was honest with herself, she had had problems with her decision since she accepted the proposal. Shouldn't she be marrying someone whose marriage proposal caused her to immediately leap into his arms, cover his face with kisses, and cry, "Yes, yes, yes." It was profoundly unromantic the way she had taken herself off and talked herself into believing that they could get past the difficulties their careers presented and their different expectations for marriage. She had told herself that love would make it all right. What the scenario had told her was that the passion she felt for Pete wasn't strong enough to keep her from feeling sexually attracted to another man.

She admitted reluctantly to herself that it wasn't going to work with Pete but she'd gone so far down this path it was going to be hard to end it without causing a lot of hurt. Did she dare try the device one more time to try to test out the answer? Could she stop then? 

Sam went home and begged off her evening with Pete on grounds of a sick headache. She took refuge in a long hot bath and a Negra Modelo. She said to the cat who was pacing around the edge of the tub, "In the words of Scarlet O'Hara, tomorrow is another day." She almost thought she heard the cat say "Fiddlededee."

A mission intervened and it was actually four tomorrows later before she could lock herself in her office and get out the device. Should she continue with the preexisting scenario #3 with the lily smell and the bitter Daniel or should she start again from the present? Starting from the present would be better practice and/or fact finding for the break up that needed to happen very soon with Pete. On the other hand, she really wanted to understand better why things had happened with Daniel. No reason why she couldn't do both, right? She would start with scenario 3 and get that off her mind so that it wouldn't keep nagging at her.

That raised an interesting question. The 2 was showing in the display but she needed 3. She could Kill 2, deleting it and leaving only 3. Before taking that step she decided to experiment with the little button next to the display and sure enough it apparently cycled through the available scenarios. That solved, she pressed Growth, then ?Now?

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

She was outside Daniel's office again, the taste of his kiss still in her mouth. Reaction set in and she started trembling. She leaned up against the wall waiting for it to pass. She was so instantly back in the moment that it amazed her. It wasn't as if it had happened days ago. It had happened moments before. She had to get it together and get back to her office. She could collapse there.

Sam pushed off against the wall with one hand just as the door to the office opened again. Daniel was obviously surprised to find her there. Surprise was followed quickly by concern. He took in her pallor and her shakiness.

"God Sam, I'm sorry. I don't know what I'm doing any more." They both heard footsteps coming down the corridor that connected to this one. "Sam, come into my office for a minute until you feel a bit better." He gently put his arm around her and walked her into his office and once more closed the door, this time quietly.

"Doing the right thing sure isn't much fun is it?" he asked ruefully.

"Daniel, I have to understand what happened with us." He wasn't looking at her now. "All those years when neither one of us was involved with anyone else and nothing happened. Why now?"

"I can answer that for myself but I can't it answer it for you." He looked over at her then, "Don't you know?" And suddenly she did. She ran for her life.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Back in the chair. Back in reality. But not back to the way things were before. All those years mooning around over Jack looked different now. She was confused about Daniel. She was confused about Jack. The only thing she was sure of was that she shouldn't be marrying Pete. Practicing the break up suddenly didn't seem to make sense. There was no kind way to tell someone that it was over. She would just have to do it and honestly, right now, she was more interested in figuring out what should come next. She would tell Pete it was over the next time she saw him, no matter how hard it was. It had to end.

She couldn't handle any more information about Daniel right now. She decided to go back to scenario 2, Jack retiring, and work on understanding her feelings for him. It was tough deciding between ?Now? and ?Future? but in the end the fact that she had left things at a rather embarrassing place made her decide to put that behind her and she hit ?Future?

She found herself lying in bed in an unfamiliar room. The lights were off but the door was wide open and light flooded in from the hall, more than enough to show the details of the room. The walls were logs and she decided she must be at the cabin Jack had been trying to get her to for years. The lemony smell hung faintly in the air.

The quilt on the bed was hers, the one her cousin had given her when her aunt, an accomplished quilter, had died. Through the half opened closet door she saw what looked like her clothes hanging next to what must Jack's clothes. There was a framed photo resting on the dresser in the direct path of the light from the door of Jack and her, in a tuxedo and a white dress, respectively. So they had, indeed, taken advantage of his retirement and she found she did recall a lovely wedding held outdoors here at this cabin on a splendid sunny afternoon in early autumn. Jack had been so handsome in that tuxedo, worn under protest but nevertheless with great flare. She had laughed a lot. It had been the perfect wedding and the perfect night.

In fact as she thought about the past couple of years with Jack, there had been a lot of laughter. He threw off one liners absolutely effortlessly. She found herself thinking about how that was beginning to get old socially. People got such a kick out of him that she had started feeling like the definitely dull half of the partnership. Unless they were conversing with someone tuned to the intellectual side who wanted to talk physics or something equally weighty, she found herself rather ignored when they socialized as a couple. If the conversation did hit deep waters, Jack had a tendency to excuse himself to go find the hors d'oeuvres.

Jack was a truly smart man but not into the life of the mind in a big way. Although he sometimes played a little dumb when she talked about her work, she knew that he was keeping up. No one could be that fast on their feet verbally and not be extremely clever. Still, although he was crazy about her, he just wasn't that interested in her science. Her husband was very proud of her intellect and bragged about her accomplishments but he was more of a spectator than a participant in the scientific puzzles that preoccupied her so much of the time.

Sam noticed she was wearing a t-shirt. She was a little surprised that she wasn't wearing something sexier but they had been married for quite awhile. Things had calmed down a little.

Jack came into the room then in boxers and a t-shirt that said, "Angler's Challenge 2007," carrying a beer and a copy of "Sports Illustrated." He set the beer down on the bedside table on his side of the bed, switched on his lamp, and went back and closed the door. He hadn't said a word to her and he still hadn't by the time he had climbed into bed, pulled a pillow up behind his back, and started to read. With a spurt of anger, she noticed he was reading the swimsuit edition, although,given the high photo content and the lack of significant text, she didn't know how much real reading there would be. The swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated had always been a real sore point with her. It was such obvious pandering on the part of the magazine and as her dear late friend, Janet, had once remarked to her, the pictured women were often a tribute to the medical profession. She consciously went with the anger since it was a lot better than feeling extremely awkward. 

She sat up, ripped the magazine out of his hands, and threw it on the floor. "Do you really need that?" she asked.

"That was a collector's item you just threw on the floor," Jack said but he wasn't at all upset. He was now smiling at her wolfishly and said, "If you're feeling frisky, you just have to ask babe."

She was thinking, "Frisky? Babe?" There was something about "babe" that had always grated. There wasn't time to delve into that thought though because he had turned towards her, thrown a leg across hers and slipped a hand under her t-shirt. As it was traveling up her stomach he kissed her, very intimately. It felt extremely nice but suddenly she panicked. She imagined herself in the briefing room with Jack at 0900 with a mental image fresh in her mind of what was inevitably about to come next. She immediately ended the session. 


	3. Chapter 3

Sam looked at the clock. She still had 45 minutes before the briefing. Okay, maybe if she hit ?Future? again she would jump into a less intimate moment that would still allow her to explore this possible timeline. 

This time she was sitting on a toilet seat staring at a home pregnancy test strip. "This is going to be a big problem," she was thinking. It wasn't any effort at all to recall the conversations they had had about the possibility of having children. 

"I had a kid Sam and I lost him. And then I felt almost as if Skaara was my kid and he died. I don't want to go through having a kid again Sam. If anything happened," He stopped for a moment, "three strikes and you're out. It would kill me. And," he said changing to another problem, "I'd be in my late 60's when the kid was in his teens. Can't you just see me coaching his soccer team, trying to get up and down the sidelines with a walker."

"People in their 60's don't need walkers, Jack, as you well know. Not to mention the fact that you are so young for your physical age." The difference in their ages bothered Jack more than he wanted to admit. She had to encourage him in this area every once in awhile.

"I got to be that age once remember," he reminded her, referring to the mission in the first year of SG-1 when he had artificially aged well past his 60's. "I can tell you right now, Sam, I was not in the mood to be any little kid's father."

He had pulled her to him and hugged her. "Can't we just enjoy being aunts and uncles to your brother's kids and Kate and Daniel's twins? You know, load them up with sugar and then send them home and let someone else deal with them?" 

They had talked about it a few other times but the conversations were pretty much by the same script. Given that atmosphere, she realized that she had been in denial for weeks and was probably more than three months along already. The test was really not necessary but somehow she had hoped for some other explanation. A tumor even felt fleetingly preferable.

"How is this possible?" she asked the cat who had watching her with interest. It must have been that night in Killarney on their trip to Ireland, their anniversary. They had stayed in the most wonderful little bed and breakfast and Jack had been so sweet and romantic. The man could certainly rise to the occasion. He had given her the most stunning sapphire ring and a night she would never forget. Her body still remembered how good she had felt. But she also recollected how in the passion they had gotten careless.

Sam honestly didn't expect Jack to demand that she have an abortion or give the baby away. He would make the best of it but he would not be, as he would put it, a happy camper. The morning sickness she was feeling was now exacerbated by nausea at the thought of his reaction. How was she going to tell him?

How was she going to tell him was the only thing she was able to think about for the next week. Even if she didn't tell him, she needed to tell his replacement commanding Cheyenne Mountain. Who knew what repeated gate travel might be doing to her unborn child not to mention exposing it to being shot at or harmed by the strange things she sometimes had no choice but to eat? She was miserable and the daily upchucking wasn't helping. Then the headache started to grow and intensify. The lily smell became overpowering and cloying and she could barely function. When she ended the session, she still hadn't told Jack but the physical pain she was feeling had to stop.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

She slumped in her chair and barely had the strength to take the device off her head. There was a lot to think about. It was difficult to do that clearly with dozens of little imps pounding on her head with anvils. She hurriedly pulled open a desk drawer, dumped out some Advils on her desk and took two dry. Water was a luxury right now. Then she took two more.

Scientifically, it appeared that using ?Future? went to a future after the last session, not a future departing from the initial one for a scenario. It was also clear that spending more than a few hours in an alternative scenario produced headaches because her brain was getting no true rest.

Personally, it was aggravating that Daniel still evidently married Kate. She hated herself for being illogically mean spirited but there it was. They had twins and she was still childless. She felt unreasonably jealous of Kate for a minute. She thought about the marriage to Jack. There were a lot of really happy memories. For the most part they had been very good together but the most recent memories pointed out problems that had been small at the beginning of the marriage but were growing more troublesome, her pregnancy being the most significant of these.

Time crawled by but eventually it was time to go to the meeting and her head hadn't gotten much better. She walked gingerly through the corridors and eased herself into a seat. Daniel watched her with concern and was immediately very solicitous. "Another headache Sam?"

She started to nod but then realized she didn't want to go through the seismic shocks such a movement would send through her body. "Yeah. It's pretty bad right now but it should go away in a few hours. I took some Advil."

Right then Jack and Teal'c both entered and sat down. Jack slid briefing folders down the table to all of them and started to talk about their next mission which looked to be more than a little problematic. As she looked at him, for a moment she felt all the deep love for him developed over the years of their marriage instead of the relatively undeveloped crush and physical attraction that he had stirred in her for years. She knew every inch of him. Had loved every inch of him. Her head was hurting so much that her self-control wasn't in play and she was evidently showing quite a bit on her face. Suddenly she realized that Jack was looking at her very oddly and Daniel looked, how did he look? Daniel looked upset, maybe hurt.

Teal'c said, "ColonelCarter, you are not feeling well?" Lovely man that he was, he was providing an immediate, more acceptable explanation for her strange behavior. 

"I really am having the most incredible sick headache. Sir, I don't think I can contribute anything worth while right now. I would like to go lie down in the infirmary for awhile."

"Sure, sure." Jack looked immediately sympathetic.

Daniel got up hurriedly from his chair and came around the table to her. "Sam, let me walk you down there. You didn't look very steady when you came in." 

Part of her felt very uneasy with Daniel now. Experientially she had actively lived over a week under the influence of the device since their scene in his office and the kiss. The device had given her manufactured memories of years more but the only days that seemed truly tangible were the ones she actually consciously walked through. A week is not a very long time to get past having had an affair with someone and that's how it felt. Her headache was so severe, though, that the pain centers took over and she was simply grateful for his support.

Lying there on the hospital bed and being subjected to Kate's through examination, she vowed that she was not going to use the device for more than a few minutes at a time in the future. 

Sam kept her promise to herself until after the headache went away but the minute she was feeling better she had an overwhelming urge to use the device again.

Daniel found her intently reading an article online about substance abuse. It matched with a printout lying on her desk describing the 12-step program. 

"Sam?" he said inquiringly.

"What," she said without looking up.

"Why are you reading about addiction?"

"Why am I reading about addiction?"

"That's pretty much what I asked." He perched on the edge of the desk a little too close for comfort with the way she was feeling lately. She scooted her chair back a little.

Daniel leaned over and rested his hands on the arms of her chair. "You know, don't answer that question yet because I have another one for you to answer first."

"Daniel, you're creeping me out." He didn't move a muscle. "Okay, what do you want to know?"

"What have I done?" He looked incredibly concerned.

She looked at him baffled. "What in the world does that mean? Have you done something and you want me to guess what it is?"

He looked exasperated then and pushed off the chair, stood up and walked across the room to stand turned three quarters away from her. "All I know," he said in a low voice, "is that you have been acting strange around me since Wednesday. You won't make eye contact with me and you shy away from me if I get close." He dropped his head and rubbed his neck. "I've racked my brain for something that I might have said or that people might have said about me." He turned back around to face her. "I'm coming up blank Sam."

She felt sick. The device was wrecking her life. She would miss Jack acutely for a moment, temporarily still in the scenario she had played out, but most of the time felt only the undeniable, but manageable, attraction she had felt for him, Brad Pitt, and Antonio Banderas for years. Good looking men you didn't expect to or necessarily want to have. With Daniel the device was inspiring the fear that if she got too close she wouldn't be able to control herself. 

Sam stood and walked around the desk, trying to buy time, to find a way to handle the situation. It didn't help that she found herself replaying their kiss. Finally she said, "It's not you Danny. It's completely me." She looked at him imploringly. "Please be patient with me."

"I guess I don't have any choice. Just…" He didn't finish the thought, gave her an unconvincing smile and left her office.

Sam impulsively used Kill to get rid of every scenario she had programmed. She took the device and locked it in a drawer and put a sign on the drawer that read "Just Say No." That night she went to an AA meeting and pretended to be an alcoholic. Every time she talked about drinking, in her mind it was using the device.

She broke it off with Pete and concentrated on her addiction problem. Every day she was at the Mountain, she spent hours either staring at the drawer or starting to open it. She called the contact AA had given her and talked off the impulse.

She was acutely uncomfortable with both Daniel and Jack. Both of them became increasingly concerned about what was going on. One day, she walked into the cafeteria to find them deep in a conversation about her. They didn't notice her until she was practically on top of them. Jack immediately stopped mid-sentence and they both looked like they wanted to be anywhere else. Finally Daniel looked at Jack and then back at her and said, "Sam, we want to talk to you." 

Jack said, "We do?"

Daniel insisted, "Yes, we do. Please sit down Sam."

She plopped rather than sat, feeling like all the strength had fled her body. Daniel continued, "Sam, we both are really worried. We've spent years working together and suddenly…"

Jack plunged in, "You act like we're some geeky kid who made an unwelcome pass at you."

Daniel looked at him, astonished, "She does? That really isn't quite how I would have described it."

"Whatever," Jack said dismissively. "Please tell us what is wrong. This just isn't good."

Looking at them, Sam had an epiphany. Her messing around with the device had brought her to the point where she was now completely in love with both of them. Not safe, I've-got-a-crush type love like she had maintained for years with Jack. Not the my good, good friend type love that had sustained her with Daniel for years. She wanted to spend her life with both of them, have both of their babies, and grow old with both of them. This was completely impossible.

All she could say was, "Please believe that neither of you have done anything wrong. I'm just going through a hard time. Breaking it off with Pete is causing me to reevaluate my whole life."

Daniel interrupted, "Breaking it off with Pete?"

"Yes, I'm not marrying him. Like I was saying, you two know me too well. I guess I've been hiding from what you might see." She stood. "I promise to do better." She left with both of them frozen in place, their mouths hanging open.

She returned to her office and took the device out of the drawer. She put it in front of her and looked at it. She didn't open any lab notes on the computer. This wasn't for science. That pretense was gone. She was going to use the device to allow her to have both of them. She programmed the scenario where she and Daniel would end up together and the scenario where she and Jack would end up together. She just gave herself a few minutes in each one. And every day, she took just a few minutes more. Not enough to cause headaches. Just enough that it would take years if ever to advance past the blush of first love to the point where problems would start.

In her real life, she was able to become comfortable with Jack and Daniel again. The real Daniel and the real Jack became less and less the real versions to her. The were just stand-ins as she waited for her few moments everyday with each of them. They both noticed that she had a tendency to look at them occasionally with a strange Madonna like smile but it was a small price for a return to situation normal.

Sam found Jennifer after some Internet sleuthing. They started an e-mail correspondence that led to a get together in DC when Sam was there for a meeting. Jennifer had actually only been married once but had produced five daughters. She was delightedly in the process of marrying the first one off and thrilled that there were four more to go. She was disappointed for Sam that Sam had never found the right man to marry. Jennifer said, "Don't give up looking. Someday it'll be 2:00 on a Saturday with the bells ringing, the processional march playing, and everything about to start. You'll never regret it." Sam, thinking about the marriage proposals she had recently received from both of her dream lovers, merely smiled and left Jennifer totally puzzled when she said, "Somewhere, it's 2:00 right now." 


End file.
